WMO warned on Tuesday that glaciers and ice sheets are melting in Greenland and Antarctica accounts for about 50% of sea level riseis accelerating, with harmful effects small island developing states (SIDS) and densely populated coastal areas.
melting glaciers
The average thickness of the world’s glaciers has dropped nearly 30 meters since 1970.
“The issue of the tape is a hot topic not only for the North Pole and the South Polebut it’s a global issue,” said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.
Irreversible changes in the global cold layer will affect more than a billion The WMO said people depend on water from melting snow and glaciers.
The ‘sleeping giant’ of carbon emissions
The agency also calls the melting Arctic permafrost a “sleeping giant” of greenhouse gases, because it stores double the amount of carbon as present in the atmosphere today.
The WMO said it considers the burning issue one of its top priorities and calls for better predictions and increased research, data exchange and investment.
Sea level rise, ice and glaciers are among the climate indicators published by WMO and tMr. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). WMO Global climate status 2022 The report highlights the shocking extent of the change.
The so-called “reference glacier”, which WMO has been monitoring for a long time, has experienced a average thickness change over −1.3 meters between October 2021 and October 2022. The loss was much larger than the average for the previous decade, the agency said.
high mountain record
The European Alps have broken records for glacier melt, exacerbated by a low-snow winter: in Switzerland, six percent of the glacier’s ice mass was lost between 2021 and 2022 – and a third between 2001 and 2022.
The Greenland Ice Sheet ends with a total negative mass balance in 26lame pants consecutive years.
Antarctic sea ice drops to 1.92 million km2 on February 25 of last year – the’s the lowest on record and almost a million km2 below the long-term average – measured from 1991 to 2020.
Arctic sea ice in September at the end of summer melts associated with 11lame pants lowest minimum monthly band range in satellite records.
The WMO says the rate of global average sea level rise has doubled in the first decade of satellite observations.
